GSC Game World has posted a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 Q&A on Facebook that doesn’t actually reveal much about the game except that it will be bigger, better and still a PC-centric game.
GSC Game World hasn’t had much to say about S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 since it announced the game in August of last year and to be honest, the Q&A it recently put up on Facebook doesn’t do much to change that situation. But it does serve up a few tidbits that will hopefully be enough to keep the rabid S.T.A.L.K.E.R. fan base sated for at least the next year or so.
Much of what it reveals isn’t terribly surprising. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 will abandon the aged X-Ray engine that powered the first three S.T.A.L.K.E.R. titles in favor of new, proprietary multi-platform software, and will tell a new story with new characters, although “some good old ones” will return as well. The game will feature “more of a survival element,” whatever that means, and although it will apparently bring S.T.A.L.K.E.R. to consoles for the first time ever, the PC version won’t suffer as a result.
“Since we develop primarily on PC, you won’t see any compromises in the PC version,” the Q&A says. “The key difference between the PC and console versions will be the beauty of graphics (meaning PC will offer more visual effects).” The new game will support DirectX 11 and GSC also promised that interface options like the map and inventory won’t be affected by the move to multiple platforms.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 will take place in the triangle between the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, the city of Chernobyl and Chernobyl 2, the former Soviet military installation containing the famous, massive “Steel Yard” radar antenna. Faction wars are out, new mutants are in and there will be more “X-Labs” and other underground complexes to explore and be terrified by.
That’s about it, really. GSC declined to answer questions about things like the possibility of more advanced NPC interactions or whether the Zone will be one giant playing field or divided up as it was in previous games, so there’s still a lot left to learn. We’ll probably have awhile to wait before we find out, too; S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 isn’t expected to come out until sometime in 2012.
